Guest BreathinHeathen Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 I always have found the supposed miracles of the Catholic Church to be quite frustrating. They actually claim to have physical evidence that can be seen by anybody, but at the same time, every one of these physical evidences never seem to be free of questionable histories. Take this for example: Recently, an old church friend of mine on Facebook shared this article on a recent event in which Pope Francis visited a church in Naples that contains a blood relic of St. Gennaro (St. Januarius). This blood is said to have the miraculous ability to change from its natural solidified state to a liquefied state on certain religious days (St. Gennaro's feast day, a day to celebrate St. Gennaro's patronage of both Naples and of the archdiocese, and the Saturday before the first Sunday in May, which is used to commemorate the reunification of his relics). However, this recent event breaks this tradition, and has been said to symbolize St. Gennaro's love for Pope Francis. Now I'm pretty skeptical when it comes to this kind of stuff. After believing full heartedly in similar miracles like Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Miracle of Lanciano, I have learned to be mistrusting of these sorts of claims. After doing a quick Wikipedia search on the supposed miracle, there definitely seems to be something sketchy surrounding this relic. To start, this is not the first time a blood miracle like this has been recorded for a saint. While this might be evidence that it is in fact a miracle, there is one thing each of these saints all had in common that might be the cause of this supposed miracle. Their blood samples are all held relatively close to each other. This already puts the supposed miracle in trouble because it seems very strange that the only blood miracles that exist just happen to be in the same country. So what could cause this blood to liquefy? There are actually many theories to this. Some think it might be that the liquid was manufactured by a team of chemists around that time. There have been other fraudulent miracle claims around that same area that have been dismissed by the church for this very reason. A 2010 experiment showed that a different phial of blood from Tuscany that shared this same phenomena would become liquefied simply by shaking it. Along with all of this, the consistancy of this liquefication is not great. Sometimes it is instant, sometimes it takes many hours or even days, sometimes it is liquefied before it's removed from their vault, and sometimes it doesn't even liquefy. Now this might be just a coincidence. It might be that this blood truly is miraculous and that there just so happened to be fake blood miracles around the same area. All we need to do is have a scientific investigation of the supposedly miraculous blood to determine that it is not another fake miracle. Oh wait... the Catholic Church doesn't allow for scientific analysis of the blood due to fear that it might cause irreparable damage. Now I will state that The Catholic Church does not officially claim this to be a miracle, but they also don't deny it. It just makes me mad that there is good reason to be skeptical of the miracle, but the church won't allow investigation. If God is so miraculous that he can consistently liquefy blood on specific days of the year, why can't he keep it from being damaged during a scientific investigation? IF these are actually miracles, and IF these are supposed to signs from the supremely perfect being that is God, the Catholic Church is doing a really bad job of showing these signs to the world. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 An Italian professor I used to know (he was from Genova) said he was at the San Gennaro festival once. The blood was not liquefying. An old lady next to him muttered (I can't write this in Neapolitan), "figlio di puttana, liquefata, liquefata!" (You son of a whore, liquefy, liquefy!). That's the believer's way of speaking to the local saint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest BreathinHeathen Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 I also find it very interesting that in the video of said miracle, nobody is freaking out. Wouldn't you be going crazy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 Meh, the Catholic church has been doing bleeding and crying statues for centuries. I'm more interested in their other magic trick - how do they hide 10,000 child molesters? 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarflungWanderer Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 Eh. My roommate is Catholic, and he's been looking at this skeptically too. Personally, I find it a bit convenient that a miracle occurs around the Pope... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongWayAround Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 I guess god was too busy changing blood from a solid state into liquid and back again to stop that plane with 150 people on it from crashing in the French Alps. We all have our priorities. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarriorPoet Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 This explains a little about how it could be happening. http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8205/does-st-januarius-blood-congeal-and-liquefy the red-coloured contents are a thixotropic substance, based on iron chloride. This means that it liquefies when stirred or vibrated and returns to solid form when left to stand. According to Cicap, the substance was probably stumbled upon by an alchemist or a painter in medieval times. This is only speculation of course, as the church refuses to let anyone actually examine the substance, but it does behave in the way that we would expect such a substance to behave. The linked page also goes into the fact that there is little to no actual evidence for the existence of St Januarious either. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 . . . as the church refuses to let anyone actually examine the substance . . . There is the tip off. It's as miraculous as David Copperfield. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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